" . . . when I was little, I used to imagine that the creaking floors could talk. That they knew all the stories of the people who walked them . . . if I could just learn their secret language, those wood floors could tell me everything."
For generations the walls, floorboards, and shelves of the Old Depot Grocery held its secrets close to the heart; living, loving, losing . . . clearly too late for a resurrection . . or perhaps not? Sarah Ashby seemed to think so, returning home after her own loss, she hoped to revive the store of her childhood while discovering new meaning for her own life in the process. But some things never changed, and it soon became apparent that her mother and her grandmother were fiercely at odds over what to do with a store that was not only losing its luster, but most of its customers.
Years earlier, Glory Ann had not been given many choices for her future after confessing that she bore a child whose father who would never return home from Vietnam. Whisked away by her father, "Glory Ann Hawthorne became Mrs. Clarence Clearwater, all to cover up a secret she was not ashamed of". . . the simple ceremony taking place in the back room of the Old Depot Grocery.
Maybe all these elusive complications needed a new perspective, God's perspective. . . Sarah's gentle confidante reminding her to ,"take the first step that feels right and see what happens next, . . . I think that's how God works in our lives a lot of times. He doesn't give us the whole picture. He gives us that one step". For if the truth ever needed to be told, it was among the "secret keepers of the Old Depot Grocery" . . . for it would undoubtedly set them free.
SEE REVIEWS BY NICOLE, PAULA, and KIM
SEE REVIEW BY WINNIE
BackCover Blurb:
Present
Day. Sarah Ashby returns to her childhood home, determined to finally
follow her dream of running the family business alongside her mother and
grandmother. So when her mother, Rosemary, announces to her that Old
Depot Grocery is closing, Sarah and her grandmother, Glory Ann, make a
plan to save the store. But Rosemary has worked her entire life to make
sure her daughter never follows in her footsteps. She has her
reasons--but she'll certainly never reveal the real one.
1965.
Glory Ann confesses to her family that she's pregnant with her deceased
fiancé's baby. Pressured into a marriage of convenience with a
shopkeeper to preserve her family's reputation, Glory Ann vows never to
love again. But some promises are not as easily kept as she imagined.
This dual-time story from Amanda Cox deftly explores the complexity of
the mother-daughter relationship, the way the secrets we keep shape our
lives and the lives of others, and the healing power of telling the
truth.
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